Archived News:

Wednesday, Jun 29, 2011

Gamasutra has an analyst's report (Adobe Acrobat format) from Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia saying Blizzard's mystery-shrouded Titan MMOG is a "casual" game that's expected some time in 2013. The source of this insight is not clear.

The Respawn Entertainment Website now has a very blurry screenshot as a tease of what's to come from this startup founded by former Infinity Ward bosses Jason West and Vince Zampella. Our best guess at this point is this is some sort of optometry simulation. Thanks IGN.

The Space Marine Forums offer the official Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Windows system requirements, which include a Steam account. The minimum and recommended stats follow. Continue here to read the full story.

Gamasutra has details from Gamelab 2011 in Barcelona, Spain on how Mojang's upcoming Scrolls will have a staggered rollout similar to the way Minecraft is creeping out bit-by-bit:

"With our new game, Scrolls, we'll follow the same formula as Minecraft," said Kaplan. "That means we'll release the game very early," at the minimal playable state.

He said this means something different for every game, of course, but people will be able to pay for it, play it, and give feedback from a very early stage. This also means frequent updates, he said, which need to be properly communicated to players, because community involvement is one of the most important elements of Minecraft.

Gaslamp Games announcesDungeons of Dredmor will be released for Windows and OS X through Steam on July 13th for the "exceptional" price of $4.99 USD (thanks John). Here's word on this classic roguelike dungeon crawler:

Step into the Dungeons of Dredmor and embrace your destiny. Face monsters the likes of which the world has never seen – the terrifying Swarmies, the undulating Thrusties, and the menacing Brax the Salesdemon. Find treasures like gold, magical weapons and armour, and lutefisk. Worship at the alter of Inconsequentia, the Goddess of Pointless Sidequests. Discover the power that can be had by wielding a bizarre armament of devastating weaponry such as the Interdimensional Axe, the Plastic Ring, and the Invisible Shield (if you can remember where you left it). Wield shoes decorated by the Dwarven Glittersmiths, all of whom have now committed suicide because of their shame, and embrace the joys of destroying giant moustache-wielding brick demons with a mace decorated with tawdry, delicious bacon. While you’re at it, be prepared to die. A lot. In hideous, screaming pain that makes you throw your keyboard out the window.

The Men of War: Assault Squad Website now offers a new patch to update Best Way's World War II strategy sequel to version 1.95.5. Their link to the change list is currently broken, but here's the overview: "update features the "Day of Victory" gamemode for MP DLC maps, adds support for upcoming skirmish DLC and a wide range of new weapon models together with several gameplay improvements." The Steam version will update automatically, and the manual patch for other versions is here and mirrored on The Patches Scrolls.

An interview on AusGamers.com with Glen Schofield is available in both video form and as a text transcript, offering an E3 discussion of Modern Warfare 3, the next installment in the Call of Duty series of military shooters. On the topic of competing with Battlefield 3, he describes how their engine will give them a competitive advantage on consoles, but he does not allow himself to be pinned down on PC features like dedicated server support, saying they "haven’t even made decisions internally" about how this will be handled.

This trailer offers a new video developer diary from Crusader Kings II, introducing the character database from the strategy/RPG sequel. This "peek into the world of medieval Europe" is conducted by game designer Chris King, who offers insights into how the character database differs from the one in the first game.

GameFront - Videogames Are Protected By the First Amendment, but They Were Always Art.One thing I have a problem with is the near-desperate way in which several industry peers have quoted Justice Antonin Scalia, who proved himself surprisingly savvy in this whole debate. He led the majority 7-2 destruction of the Videogame Law and it is incredibly cheering to see him display intelligent and informed opinions as he eviscerates the flimsy work of Yee and his cohorts. However — and this happens every time somebody who isn’t a gamer supports games — gamers have taken Scalia’s words as validation. Sentiments like, “Videogames are now officially legitimate” and “We’re art now” could be found all over Twitter yesterday, and I feel that if you REALLY want games to be “legitimate”, there’s one thing to do — stop saying it!

MyCrysis now has the promised release of the Crysis 2 editor package, "which includes the all-new CryENGINE 3 Sandbox Editor, allowing you to create custom maps, mods and content for Crysis 2!" They accompany this with the relaunch of CRYMOD, Crytek's official modding community. Downloads of the editor package are mirrored on AtomicGamer, Gamer's Hell, and PC Games Forever, and here's more on what is included: "The package also includes various tools, such as FMOD Designer, Poly Bump, plugins for Maya and 3ds Max and more! We’ve also included some sample assets to help you discover the possibilities with the Crysis 2 Editor package."

Capcom is working on a PC-exclusive online game called Ixion Saga, reveals Adriasang, who learned of this from the latest issue of Famitsu magazine. There are few details, but apparently alpha testing will begin next month, and the plan is to launch the game next summer. Word is: "Ixion Saga is an eight versus eight combat game where players make use of swords, guns and magic for the battle. Players form "unions" with other players, and create a character with default types Striker, Caster and Blaster. These types respectively have sword, magic and heavy firearms as their weapons. In addition to team on team battle, it appears that the game will also have giant monsters." Thanks VG247.

The Battle.net forums outline new hotfixes applied to the server-side of World of Warcraft since yesterday's version 4.2 patch for Blizzard's MMORPG. The list of changes in the hotfix follows. Continue here to read the full story.

The Word of Notch has a "trickle" of information about the eventual version 1.8 "Adventure Update" for Minecraft, the sandbox adventure game:

The update is pretty big, and will change a lot of how Minecraft is played, focusing on making exploration and combat much more rewarding, and bringing in a bigger sense of adventure to the game.

Already implemented are new complex terrain features, at least one new mob, some interesting new combat mechanics, a new lighting engine, and some experimental new gameplay ideas. To come is more interesting farming, bigger incentives to explore, and npc villages.

This interview on Everyeye.it is the English version of a conversation with Ivan Buchta about Arma 3, the next installment in Bohemia Interactive Studios' upcoming military shooter sequel. Topics include the structure within the game's open world, AI improvements, their disinterest in adding a cover system, underwater combat, vehicles, weapon changes, DirectX 10/11 differences, multiplayer modes, and more.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviews Jonathan Pelling, asking the Creative Director at 2K Marin about XCOM, the upcoming first-person shooter based on the classic strategy series. They discuss the game's story, art style and other sensibilities. And we hereby award this Q&A the Dick Cavett Linguistic Trophy for the opening question: "More story-focused than the peripatetic original plan; is this because you’ve got people like Jordan Thomas and yourself on board and you’re trying to make use of people who are much more used to telling stories, rather than something stochastic or random?"

Yesterday, it popped into my head that R2-D2 is not actually an android, but simply a robot, leaving me wondering why this never occurred to me before. The thing is, it's not like I was watching Star Wars or Blade Runner or anything related, it just struck me out of nowhere. I guess I'm lucky that geekiness is in favor these days, as that's painfully geeky.